Asian Miscellany (16)—Education in Heian Japan

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Asian Miscellany.

[a] Centered RF

My last few posts in "Asian Miscellany" have been driven by deadline—and many of them will follow in the coming weeks and months, since I have signed contracts to deliver a whole passel of encyclopedic material to various publishers before a self-imposed deadline of January 30th. As I explained in the introduction, this series of posts allows me to try out a few ideas that I plan eventually to include in various encyclopedias or on-line sites that have asked for my input. They are not the same as the pieces that will eventually be published, but constitute more of a "long draft," meant to work through a few ideas as I work on brief essays that often mandate strict "word counts" of 250, 500, 1,000, or 2,000 words. 

For the next dozen or so posts, I have been asked to write about Heian Japan (794-1185). It is one of the most fascinating periods in world history, so I trust that the topics will "connect" for readers of the first ten "Asian Miscellany" posts (almost all of the topics—children, family, urban/rural—are the same). They work well for people interested in a brief introduction to Heian Japan or for people interested in comparative issues. Although an introduction to the Heian period in Japan would require its own introduction, I trust that a reading of these "Heian Japan posts (11-20 in Asian Miscellany) will encourage a few of you to read a bit of the literature of the Heian period.

Click here for other posts in the Heian Japan mini-series:
City-Country    Children         Food-Drink      Entertainment               Sports-Games
Education        Family Life     Work-Labor     Language-Literature     Housing-Shelter

Education in Heian Japan

"Education” in every society—no matter how formal or relaxed the standards—requires children to move beyond life in the family and to acquire skills valued by adults in the larger society. In Heian Japan, what we today consider “education”—structured patterns of reading, writing, and practice—was limited to a tiny segment of the population. The children of aristocratic families had a formidable task ahead of them. They had to learn not only the sounds and sentence patterns of their native “spoken” language, but also the odd and ill-fitting abnormalities of language that had been borrowed wholesale from China in the previous three centuries. In later generations, the educational path would be much more smooth; in Heian times, few teaching and learning patterns had yet been developed to make the process less onerous. Although few in number, students in Heian Japan traveled one of the roughest educational roads in all of world history.

[b] Stone-etched RF

Rural Education

Almost no sources exist concerning education and enculturation in rural Japan during the Heian period. Provincial schools, which would—in later centuries—be a mainstay of education, combining both local and national traditions, were almost unknown at the beginning of the Heian period. Certainly a small sector of the rural aristocracy was literate, but the vast bulk of that education was attained in the capital or allied areas before moving to the outer provinces beyond the capital. By the ninth century, however, provincial schooling had begun to take root in at least rudimentary form, and it would be a serious mistake to assume that literacy in the heartland of the main island of Hōnshū was limited to just the capital.

In addition to a few sources that make clear the manner in which key agricultural operatives were required to have a working knowledge of the written language, we have brief but fascinating glimpses into the written world of the provinces. To be sure, provincials were regarding as severely lacking in the skills of the urban populace (such views came from an urban perspective, of course). A brief section from the Tale of Genji tells of Prince Genji’s shock to be among ordinary people, yet the household in which he was staying was made up of literate inhabitants. How far, he notes, it was from the world of the capital, though.

It was the fifteenth of the eighth month. The light of an unclouded full moon shone between the ill-fitting planks of the roof and flooded the room. What a queer place to be lying in! thought Genji, as he gazed round the garret, so different from any room he had known before. It must be almost day. In the neighboring houses people were beginning to stir, and there was an uncouth sound of peasant voices: “Eh! How cold it is! I can’t believe we shall do much with the crops this year”…”Wake up, neighbor. Time to start. Did he hear, d’you think?” and they rose and went off each to the wretched task by which he earned his bread.[1]

[c] Farmstead RF

Although the passage above is meant to contrast the refinement of the capital with the rusticity of the countryside, other people all around Prince Genji in this countrified scene could read and write. We know little of the economics of rural education, but study of several adjoining societies (including China, Korea, and Vietnam) give a hint. People educated in the capital who could not find adequate teaching or mentoring positions could take their skills to less developed areas and “market” the cultural centrality of their educations. Increasingly wealthy families from the growing manorial estates put a premium on teachers from the capital, and the dynamics of rural education built from there. As in all rural situations until the age of the Internet, the latest language and styles could never reach the provinces in time to avoid the mockery of fashion-conscious urbanites. The dominant aristocratic families in the provinces, however, had mastered language and literature, and would soon use these (not to mention their military skills and economic position) to dominate Japan in the later Heian era.

Aristocratic Education

Within the capital city of Heian Kyō, education during the Heian period saw its highest forms. Unlike the case with rural education, the sources here are plentiful, and divided almost equally between the intellectual work of men and women. While we know little about how anyone studied language and literature in the provinces during the Heian period, we have abundant materials showing the way in which almost all studies took place in the capital.

The greatest contrast of the period saw men focus on the traditional rhetorical style of classical Chinese that was “borrowed” from China in the sixth through eighth centuries. Boys struggled to master the complex forms of the Chinese characters, and men wrote dense and often abstract texts in a profusion of borrowed graphs from overseas. Although it was, at the time, far less rewarded, women began writing consistently in the equally adapted (but less strict) system of sound-elements (kana) that far more closely resembled the indigenous spoken language.

[d] Character RF

The fact that the entire urban educational system stressed a highly gendered connection to the use of Chinese characters had an almost immediate impact on readership—even in Heian times, and certainly later. The stilted language of male writing was quickly forgotten, and few “male” texts remain that have had a significant literary influence in Japanese history. On the other hand, everything from The Tale of Genji to numerous court diaries written in women’s parlance, so to speak, have been preserved as educational mainstays throughout the ages. It is rare that a system of education misfires so completely that all of the revered writers of a generation are forgotten, while an almost invisible subset is promoted to the first rank in subsequent generations. That is the case with the Heian, however, and the implications of gendered language and borrowing from a great civilization cast a very great shadow over all of subsequent Japanese education.

Click here for other posts in the Heian Japan mini-series:
City-Country    Children         Food-Drink      Entertainment               Sports-Games
Education        Family Life     Work-Labor     Language-Literature     Housing-Shelter

[e] Experiential education RF

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[1] Keene, Donald, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1955), 117.

Bibliography

Donald Keene. Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century. New York: Grove Press, 1955.